The Value of Creating for an Audience and the Role of Intrinsic Motivation in Creativity

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things.

“If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.”

Show notes:

• adamgrant.net
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin • 2014)
• Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin • 2017)
• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (Viking • 2023)
• Work Life with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
• Re: Thinking with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
• Grant's New York Times archive
• 17:00 "The Necessity of Others is The Mother of Invention: Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivations, Perspective Taking, and Creativity" (Adam Grant and James Berry • Academy of Management • Nov 2017)
• 22:00 "It's Not the Ideas You Create, It's Which Ones You Choose" (Leigh Buchanan • Inc. • Feb 2016)
• 40:00 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Viking • 2021)

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